Morph the Cat (W/Dvd) (Spec)

Donald Fagen - Morph the Cat (W/Dvd) (Spec)

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CD Details

Artist: Donald Fagen
Edition: Music CD
Format: Special Edition
CD Release Date: 2006-03-14
Music Label: Reprise / Wea
Soundtracks:

Morph The Cat
H Gang
What I Do
Brite Nitegown
The Great Pagoda Of Funn
Security Joan
The Night Belongs To Mona
Mary Shut The Garden Door
Morph The Cat (Reprise)

Music reviews of Morph the Cat (W/Dvd) (Spec)

Music Review: DVD-A version is wonderful
Rating: 5 Stars

It is great to get both the CD and the DVD-A in this special set, so you can compare the two systems. I only have a stereo DVD-A system, but the sound of the bass and drums is already several notches above what I have learnt to expect. It sounds open and very live, and draws you in to some fine music and lyrics.

It is a subtler, jazzier album than 'Nightfly', and I like the jazz/funk playing more in this than either of the recent Dan releases. I love Becker's guitar playing, but Herington, Krantz and McCracken dazzle, and the new keyboard sounds, including a fat Hammond tone and a 'harmolodia' replacing the blues synth, enrich it as well. Fagen's harmonic creativity is as distinctive as that of many classical composers, and is at the core of some engrossing songs. The brass arrangements and performances are also very classy and enriching.

Looking at the distortions on the cover, I thought Morph might have been a verb. But the title song suggests it is a name, with references to the cat in TS Eliot's 'Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock', and the groove makes you feel you are truckin' down Broadway. So the New York smog gets morphed into Morph the Cat, a friendly genius loci. After several listenings I think he is suggesting that you can morph your life, creating new spaces to be who you want to be. We don't have to live on anyone else's terms, and we can even turn something toxic or unpleasant into a sense of security. For example, in 'Security Joan', a humble security officer becomes an angel with a wand. We don't have to be bulldozed by others' approach to things - life's what we make it. Even Death can be morphed into the 'fellow in the brite nitegown'. 'What I do', the tribute to Ray Charles, is also a joy. It is weird to hear Fagen's reedy vocals evoking Brother Ray, held together by a beautiful simple Rhodes piano lick. 'This is the H Gang' is poppy fun, with echoes of 'Chain Lightning' and 'Peg'. Other themes of fragile love, grief and foreboding are also explored. A reprise of 'Morph the Cat' closes the album, reminding us about putting everything into Morph's context - make of it what you will.

The album makes me think of Woody Allen, but replacing his forlorn nostalgia with 21st century hepcat cool. With this DVD-A the new frontier is not off into the Nightfly's future, but we have already climbed into the dawn. This is going to become a fat classic.

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Description of Morph the Cat (W/Dvd) (Spec)

The first solo album in 13 years from Donald Fagan, Morph The Cat is another contemporary classic from half of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame duo Steely Dan. With Fagan's adventurous musical depth, uniquely layered lyrics and entertaining subject matter (from a conversation with the ghost of Ray Charles to a romantic liaison with an airport security guard named Joan), Morph the Cat is the newest chapter chronicling the most sophisticated music in rock. Special Edition CD-DVD-Audio that features 5.1 mixes.

For all the delight their fans take in parsing their wry and obstinately obscure lyrics, Steely Dan wouldn't command the kind of following they have if they weren't such consummate craftsmen in shaping melodies, layering keyboard and guitar effects and applying sophisticated doses of jazz, funk and soul. On his own albums, of which Morph the Cat is only the third--and the first since 1993's Kamakiriad--the group's sardonic co-mastermind Donald Fagen avails himself to more socially observant and personally revealing themes. But here, too, it's the music's dark shimmer and bumptious grooves that get under your skin, carrying his serious intentions with them. The grandly allusive "Morph," named after what Fagen describes as a "vast, ghostly cat-thing" that hovers in the Manhattan sky (not unlike Woody Allen's catty mother in "New York Stories"), reflects with no loss of irony or oblique meaning on the angst and sense of loss felt in the post-9/11 world. There are visions of death--including his own--and political oppression. There's a comic romantic encounter with a female airport security guard and a reverent faceoff with the ghost of Ray Charles, whose essence is nailed: "Well, you bring some church but you leave no doubt/As to what kind of love you love to shout about." Even when Fagen's hipster sensibility flirts with preciousness, the music is so richly, radiantly alive, the collective power of the songs can't be denied. --Lloyd Sachs

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